German director Johanna Seggelke chronicles her relationship with free-spirit Sky as they roam
South Africa together before fetching up in Berlin
It would be easy to sneer at the almost agonising intimacy of this documentary from 26-year-old German film-maker Johanna Seggelke, made as part of her course at the University of Television and Film in Munich and tells the story of her passionate relationship (and possibly romance, it’s left open) with Sky, whom she meets backpacking in South Africa. Running at just 53 minutes, it’s a slight and narrowly focused film; I suspect some will find it too self-absorbed. But there is something so disarmingly honest in how Seggelke opens up her feelings and vulnerabilities, and captures the intoxication of an intense teenage/young adult friendship.
The year is 2016; Seggelke is 19. Feeling lost, she’s travelling around South Africa when she spots Sky in a bar. “I thought you were the coolest girl I’d ever seen,” she explains on the voiceover. Sky, who grew up between South Africa and the US, has dropped out to smoke weed and go backpacking. Seggelke is intoxicated by Sky’s rootlessness: the way she lives in a squall of chaos and pennilessness, constantly losing important things like her driving licence. For her part, Sky says that she wants to be more solid and grounded like Seggelke: “It’s that German mentality.”